Abstract

Between the 1st and 3rd of April 2019, Oxford Archaeology East (OA East) conducted trial trenching at Turnpike Farm near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, (centred TL 20326 46491) in advance of a planning application to construct a lake and plant trees.
A total of four trenches measuring 30m long, two measuring 25m long, and one measuring 15m long were opened within the c. 2.1ha site. Four ditches and two pits were revealed in four of the trenches. The ditches were mainly located in the western and southern parts of the site, whilst the two pits were located in the central area. One of these pits, in Trench 3, produced three sherds of Early Bronze Age Collared Urn pottery. Twenty sherds of mostly Middle-Late Iron Age pottery were recovered from the remaining features, with the largest assemblages recovered from a second pit in Trench 3 and a wide, shallow ditch in Trench 7. Flintwork was also recovered from several of the features and from the subsoil in the eastern part of the site, attesting to a prehistoric presence potentially from at least the Early Neolithic period.